


Peace

by scribaversutus



Series: Whiplash [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 03:39:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4731488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribaversutus/pseuds/scribaversutus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda should be trying to find a way out of this, but… would it be so bad if she didn’t, she wonders?  To give up completely and disappear into the black? To never again feel the pain of her shattered heart or hear his voice taunting her from a place she cannot yet visit…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Angst, angst, more angst, and then not angst. A more-or-less sequel to Again.

Fear fills her as the sirens blare. Not terror, not yet anyways, but enough to make her stomach turn as she throws herself out of the chair and through the door. The sirens mean a mission. The sirens mean all hands on deck. The sirens mean something has gone horribly wrong – and the gods forgive her, but she does not want to know what.

Wanda’s thoughts race faster than her feet, trying to overcome the fear with planning despite the knowledge that it will not work. Action plans and diagrams of team formations flash in front of her eyes, but they are all untested because they all include her – and she has not fought alongside the Avengers yet.

She has not fought since her arms encircled Pietro for the last time, her heart snapped in two and half of gone with him. She’s never cried; her pain is too great for tears to help anything. She’s thrown everything she has into training since then, but when it comes time to use her skills in a fight, even a simulated one, she freezes. It feels wrong. Pietro is supposed to be beside her, or rather all around her, watching her back even as he trusts her to watch his. He’s supposed to be here, cracking bad jokes and telling everyone he beats the joke he likes best. God, he’d said that stupid line too many times to count. He’d thought it was so funny, and she couldn’t deny that it had held a special place in her heart too.

She can still hear him saying it, can hear the smirk in his voice and the laughter in his soul, but it no longer comforts her. Every time she hears it now…

She swallows hard and her feet stutter to a stop, guilt overwhelming the fear and pain for a split second before it mingles with them, creating a cocktail of emotions she wishes she couldn’t feel. But she’s never been one to lie to herself, and she does not intend to start now. Wanda forces herself to finish the thought.

Pietro’s voice only returns when she tries to fight, now. When she takes her place in the ranks of the Avengers his memory invades her mind and she hears his voice saying his favorite phrase over and over and over, louder each time until it’s so loud that it drowns everything out and she can’t handle it, can’t withstand it, crumples in front of it like she had crumpled in the realization that he was dead. Like she is crumpling now, at the mere thought of whatever fight they are about to face, because she can’t stand to hear his voice again and not have him there beside her. Because she didn’t see it coming. Because she could have seen it coming, and didn’t. Because she didn’t stop it. She should have stopped it, she thinks desperately, and the thought rips apart the seams she rebuilds every day to try and 

But she has places to be, and no time to waste. Wanda pulls herself together, just barely, and moves toward the hangar feeling as if the strings that bind her together are pulling loose and dragging behind her. She makes it, barely, collapses into one of the seats and buckles herself in while ignoring the concerned looks from the rest of the team. They cannot help her. No one can.

Lost in her own mind, she doesn’t pay much attention to Steve’s briefing. She is too busy trying to control the whirlwind that her thoughts have become and fight back the black hole that is trying to swallow the half a heart she has left, her body numb to everything around her. Today she is losing the battle, and she wishes Natasha or Clint was here; they know how to calm and reassure her better than anyone else on the team, and lately even having them nearby has been enough to help her find her inner strength and climb out of the void in her soul.

The jet lands and the team disembarks, Wanda following them aimlessly. On a whim, she uses her powers to look for Clint and Natasha. She knows they are not here, off on their own mission, but now she reaches out in search of their energies anyways… and physically jumps when she finds them almost immediately, concealed behind a ruined building on the team’s five o’clock. Now she has questions. Why is the pair so close to the team’s destination? What are they hiding from? Why aren’t they responding to her energy? Why...

Why do their energies feel hostile?

Abruptly panicked, Wanda dives headlong into Clint’s energy – and screams as she is surrounded by cold blue flames that sap her will and steal her strength and try to shut her out of her own body. She struggles, fight or flight kicking in and it’s blocking her way out so the only choice is to fight, but Pietro’s voice creeps into her ear and the sound curdles her blood and leaves her frozen, unable to fight, unable to resist the pull of the blue whose essence whispers to give in, give up, give herself over to the Ruler, and the flames lick up her legs and envelop her body and reach for her face, smothering her until she begins to drift.

It’s not at all what the flames had led her to expect. Her powers tell her that she is deep inside Clint’s mind, thrust into a corner and the door locked behind her. There is no pain, no guilt, nothing but darkness and a vague sensation of what her body is feeling. It is the closest thing to peace that she has felt since her brother’s death. Wanda knows she should be trying to find a way out of this, but… would it be so bad if she didn’t, she wonders? To give up completely and disappear into the black? To never again feel the pain of her shattered heart or hear his voice taunting her from a place she cannot yet visit…

She does not get a chance to make a decision.

She hears a voice again, squeezes her eyes shut and braces herself for the pain to shoot through her chest again, but it isn’t the voice she expects. It’s Clint, she realizes with a start, he’s locked in the same corner she is – or rather, she’s been locked in with him, in his mind – and although he looks more drawn and tired than ever, she has never been gladder to see him.

His voice grows more frantic as she moves only to hug him, gesturing towards the “door” and trying to push her away. She does not care in the slightest. His presence only makes this place more perfect, not less. She feels almost happy; she’d forgotten what it feels like. But another feeling is enveloping her with it, a rage building around them both. It has to be coming from somewhere and it’s not from her or Clint, so Wanda forces her powers through the walls of their cell and tracks it down. It’s coming from Clint’s body, she is shocked to find, and she pushes harder, realizes that it may be Clint’s body but it is definitely not his mind or his will. They’ve been replaced with something colder, more ruthless, definitely designed after Clint but more like what makes him human, what makes him Clint, has been torn out and replaced with something Other. It is strange enough to make her flinch and give it a wide berth as she keeps poking around, the emotions she had been so glad to be rid of settling back into her in waves of worry and fear, panic staved off for now by the fact that she is focused on her task, doing something that occupies her mind and keeps her busy.

Closing her eyes to concentrate, Wanda catches a trail of energy leading away from the Other and follows it. It leads her to another Other, and – oh no – this one is in the form of Natasha. Wanda feels her stomach drop but presses on and feels the trail grow stronger as she nears something Else, something that emanates more power than she’s ever felt before, something too bright to see clearly in this plane. She stares at it anyways, and pays the price when it flashes and blinds her for a moment, and during that moment Pietro’s voice whispers in her ear again and she panics, loses control. She is snapped back to the cell in Clint’s mind in an instant, shaken and weak, and surprised to find Clint supporting her as she opens her eyes with a moan. All of her pain and sorrow and guilt are back, and she finds that it is harder to carry them now that she’s had a few moments without them. Clint’s grip on her arms grows tighter, and she glances into his terror-filled eyes at the exact moment he throws her headlong into the wall.

Caught off-guard, she has no time to react and so her powers react for her, gathering at the point in the wall she will hit and weakening it to the point that she plunges through it and opens her eyes with a gasp of shock, back in her body, the sensation of being connected to Clint fading rapidly. As it disappears, she grows frantic. Her two closest mentors have been taken over by a force she cannot begin to name, emptied of themselves and something else poured in. She remembers the rage she felt growing inside Clint’s body and whirls – she is just in time to deflect an arrow aimed straight at Steve’s heart. The field explodes around her.

Wanda drops to her knees as everything presses against her, the battle on the outside and her own battle on the inside crushing her between them. She doesn’t know what to do, looks up to see Natasha stalking toward her, guns raised, and doesn’t know how to save her. Instantly, she hears Pietro’s voice rise again as the pressure inside her grows. She tries desperately to do something, anything, wills her body to move until she’s screaming in her head and the pressure keeps growing, growing, growing until it explodes.

It explodes and it is a primal scream ripping from her throat; it explodes and it is a burst of energy propelling her to her feet; it explodes and is a flood of tears tracing trails down her cheeks; it explodes and it is a wave of red power bursting out from her and sending Natasha tumbling backwards, her head snapping back and hitting a rock hard enough to leave her dazed – and in that instant, Wanda feels a bit of Natasha’s true energy leak out.

She knows what to do.

Running to Natasha’s side before she can fully recover, Wanda crushes the panic inside her and manipulates her power into the same form she used to show the Avengers their worst fears, but with a twist. Rather than instructing the neurons to see something that’s not there, she tells them to misfire, as if they had just received a sharp blow and rattled around a bit. Natasha collapses from the half-sitting position she’s managed to achieve, and Wanda catches her gently and lays her down on the ground before ordering her brain to function normally again, but to sleep instead of wake up. Placing a protection spell around the still form, Wanda rises to her feet and strides purposefully away, locating not-Clint’s energy and honing in on it. She has work to do.

Before long she spots the archer; he’s perched in a tree, of all places, fending off Iron Man and Falcon while using the trunk as cover from the non-lethal ordinances the pair is trying to zap him with. Pushing her abilities to the limit, Wanda repeats the procedure on Clint from where she is rather than risk drawing his attention, the effort dropping her to one knee and making spots swim in front of her eyes. She looks up in time to watch Tony lift him gently out of the tree before letting her head drop again and watching her tears, still flowing, drip into the dirt at her feet. The sight brings a small smile to her face. She has missed this.

Back at the jet, Wanda wakes up Natasha and then Clint, stepping back as they stir and slowly sit up. She sees the emotions flicker over their faces, confusion and pain and panic, and watches in satisfaction as they settle into relief after Clint asks a question that, from the looks on their faces, holds a lot of meaning for them both. She watches their heads move as the other team members take turns explaining what happened, and knows when their eyes land on her and see the tears still running slowly down her face. Clint looks to Natasha next, and when she nods they both turn back to her and extend their arms, embracing her and letting her feel all their gratitude, even what she thinks is a strong hint of love. The feeling reminds her of the ache still present in her heart, but it is just that – an ache, not the ripping pain she’s grown so used to. Now she feels something else, too, something she thought she might never feel again.

Peace.


End file.
